He trundled up to the kitchen table, a big smile on his face and his blue eyes happier than she expected, considering the trauma he’d suffered.
Nate was tall for a six-year-old, which didn’t surprise Rysa at all. He looked a lot like his father, too, which also didn’t surprise Rysa. And he was fast developing a take-no-shit, service-oriented personality.
“Ms. Drake,” he said. He always called her “Ms. Drake” like she was one of his teachers. “Look what I drew.” He held out a sheet of paper.
Paper, too, was rare at the moment, but Christie squirreled away a lot of supplies.
She and Michael had gone up to the courthouse the day before the Incursion opened and filed the paperwork to get a wedding license. They hadn’t officially married when he disappeared, but the county—and the world—looked upon Michael Seaver as a hero, and allowed her the license.
Nate handed Rysa the paper.
He’d drawn two good dragons standing off against a much larger bad dragon. The good dragons worked with living people while the bad dragon stood on top of some poor soul with his tongue hanging out and x’s for eyes.
“That about sums it up, Nate,” she said. No reason to sugar-coat the world for a child who was going to grow up working with both types of dragons.
The kid looked much too solemn for a six-your-old. “I wish all the dragons were good,” he said.
She leaned close. “I’ll tell you a secret.” She glanced at Christie, who nodded her okay. “You’re going to help all the dragons be good when you grow up.” She sat back and tapped her temple.
His already big, blue eyes grew bigger. “Really?”
He knew she was a future-seeing Fate, though Christie had said he was having some trouble separating what that meant in the real world from what he wanted it to mean. No, she couldn’t see when his daddy would come home. No, she couldn’t blink and make it happen either, like a genie. No, she couldn’t fix the world.
Not this cycle of history. That didn’t mean she couldn’t help a young man toward a future where he would make a difference.
“Yes,” she said.
He’d make a grand difference in her life, in the life of one specific, good dragon, the lives of his family, and the lives of the world. Of course he’d lose the blue from his eyes and gain raven-black waves in his hair, but that wouldn’t happen until he grew as tall as his father.
He all but bounced on the balls of his feet. “Okay!” he said, and ran back into the living room and his toys.
“Do your homework!” Christie half-heartedly yelled. She waved when he looked over his shoulder, and blew him a kiss. “He’s taken to climbing the outside of the house because he ‘wants to be a good dragon.’”
Rysa chuckled. Of course he did. “Watch him for major depression symptoms,” she said. “Especially when he hits his teen years.” She sipped her tea again.
Christie nodded. “Mike has issues.”
Rysa reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “You let us know if you need help.”
Christie looked down at their fingers. Slowly, she squeezed back. “I hope you’re correct,” she said. “Not about the depression.” She sipped at her own tea. “About his life being right.”
“I am,” Rysa said. She squeezed Christie’s hand again.
“Mike’s coming home.” She said that every visit. “They all are.” He wasn’t dead. Neither was Gavin, Ian, or Andreas. They just weren’t here.
Anna said the containment unit vanished just before the Incursion closed. They lost four good men to God knows where, and gained a ghost spaceship in geosynchronous orbit over Portland.
Sufficiently advanced tech and all that, for sure. The human world now reeked of “magic” just as much as it reeked of dragon-caused geo-engineering, war, and death.
Christie nodded. “Thanks,” she said, and sipped her own tea. “I wish we could tell Mike we’re okay.”
“Soon,” Rysa said.
A new day—and world—dawned. Good people worked to make sure the war ended as quickly as possible. Everyone who needed to come home, would.
“I promise,” Rysa said.
Ragnar ran down the muddy path from the cave’s entrance. He barked twice and wagged his big doggy butt, and waited among the tender grass and flowers at the edge of the new parking area carved out of the mountain just south of the Dragon’s Rock.
The Rock now had permanent helipad markings and lights, automatic snow removal equipment for the inevitable large, late-spring storms, and an enclosed external staircase and elevator added to its cave-facing side. The trail to the cave was now a gravel road. The starts of three new outbuildings littered the path between the Rock and the cave’s entrance antechamber, and included a full stable.
Daisy was in the process of moving her father’s horses up from Branson to join her dogs and the three kitties. By mid-summer, they’d have a pony for everyone, in case they lost access to gasoline and electricity.
Ragnar by himself, though, meant that someone who should not be alone was alone outside.
Rysa slammed the truck’s door at the same time her present-seer pointed at the Rock’s elevator. “Ladon! Dragon!” she yelled. “Why are you two out here by yourselves?”
Ragnar barked again and circled her legs. He’d taken to watching over Ladon and Dragon, and in the four months since they closed the Incursion, had decided all by his doggy self to become as much Dragon’s support animal as Ladon’s. At this point, he spent more time in their apartment demanding pets and playtime than he did in Daisy’s.
Radar stayed with Daisy and seemed to be mourning Gavin’s absence as much as she was.
“Thank you for keeping an eye on them.” She rubbed the big dog’s head.
Dragon twisted around the Rock’s near face and haltingly ambled down the path toward the car park. His bones still hurt, and his hide had not yet fully healed, but with each new day, he regained some of his strength and agility.
Like Daisy and Ladon, Dragon had no memory of the Intrepid crew stepping in to shield the worst of the blast that closed the Incursion. No one responded to Rysa’s tales with disbelief; they all carried clear signs of healing interventions prior to her father and the de la Turris healers finding them in the field.
Trajan’s people grilled her about every detail she could remember, and she shared her recollections right down to the shape of the insignias on the crew’s jackets. Every snippet of intelligence helped.
Dragon slowly walked up. You have returned, he signed.
She hugged his big, semi-camouflaged head. He couldn’t mimic to full invisibility yet. He was still careful when he left the cave, and only became fully visible under specific and controlled circumstances.
They had to be careful. Humans held most of North America, but hellhounds were everywhere—and men with guns looking to shoot anything with six talons.
We were attending to the uplink, he signed.
“Ah,” she said. Someone had to check the communication systems twice daily, and doing so did made a good excuse to go outside.
“How are you feeling?” She added a flash of healing into her second hug.
I improve, he signed. Human missed you.
Ladon hobbled around the side of the Rock. He leaned on his cane and swung his robotic leg as he made his way through the snowmelt and the mud.
He still wasn’t used to the massive, high-tech cast on his right leg. Her father saved the bone but not a lot else, and had encased the leg in a chamber meant to help Ladon’s natural, accelerated healing and assist her father’s class-one abilities to regrow the missing tissue. Progress was being made, but he needed to wear it for another month.
The black patch over his right eye would go in a few days. He’d have use of his eye again by the end of the week, and full use again by the beginning of summer.
Ladon reached for Rysa’s hand. “It’s quieter out here.”
She kissed his cheek. “Too many pregnant women inside?”
&nbs
p; Her big, strong husband’s one good eye rounded. His cheeks lifted. He smiled and placed his hand on her belly.
The thought of becoming a father brought as much joy to Ladon as it did fear; he wanted a family but he’d lived through losing too many wives to Dracae pregnancies. Dragon worried, too.
Rysa kissed his chin. No need to argue about possibilities today. The sun shined bright and her husband had snuck out of the cave with only his best friend and his dog.
She curled her arm around his waist and leaned more on him than she should have, but she knew he didn’t mind. Neither of them minded.
He grinned and wisely changed the subject. “The Australians found three hundred and twenty-eight people in the Indian Ocean.” He shook his head. “Four months in ten lashed-together boats.”
They wouldn’t be the last, either. Trajan had made a point of rescuing every single living human, and four months into his new reign, he was making good on his promises.
“Any word from Dmitri?” She took Ladon’s arm and helped him turn toward the path.
“The Russians and what remains of NATO cleared Berlin this morning.” Ladon pointed at the dot in the sky. “Portland says that if they can get a crew into Kazakhstan, Dmitri’s people will launch a rendezvous vessel.”
No one on the ghost ship answered attempts at communication. The ship orbited but did not maneuver.
And it… changed. The consensus was that closing the Incursion pulled a version—versions, really—of the Intrepid that held no crew into the what-is. In the telescopes, one version appeared clean and tidy, with its name painted in miles-wide letters along its underbelly.
The other version, dirty and scarred. Heavy and armored. Its visible weapons alone made getting up there necessary.
But the most frightening part of the war-Intrepid wasn’t its battle wounds. The scariest part was the new name burned in over its Intrepid call-sign: Dragonslayer.
The Praesagio techs were still working on the math of the phase changes and their effects on the ship’s orbit. They didn’t even know yet if it was truly there in real-space, or if they all looked up every morning at a new-ghost.
The dragons in Tokyo had also noticed the ship, but it seemed that they, like humanity, now had limited access to orbital launches. Every remaining Fate saw that the dragons had exited the Incursion not expecting a need to go back up. They were much more advanced technologically, though, so the race was on to reach the Intrepid.
So the possibility of a Kazakhstan launch was welcome news.
The war, for the most part, was out of the hands of the Dracae. Little Alexei would arrive in about a week and a half—Rysa’s seers came in handy for birth planning—so no battles for Anna and Derek. Daisy practiced with her new ability. She kept herself busy. But she, too, wanted nothing to do with the war and had refused to move to Praesagio’s main campus in Portland. She didn’t trust Trajan to protect her baby, and Rysa agreed.
Rysa’s mother took care of most of the politics. Her father tended Ladon and the dragons while Eric tended Special Medical’s war efforts from Portland. And the original Draki Prime had vanished once again.
Dragon and Sister-Dragon wanted nothing to do with the fighting, and though they helped her father and offered what understanding they could, they preferred to stay in the safety of the cave. No one argued. No one pushed. No one knew if the invader-dragons still had a hit out on the “traitors” and no one was willing to sacrifice the lives of Earth’s only two human-associated dragons to find out.
The three halves of the Dracos walked hand-in-hand toward their home. Ladon limped, but he lived. Dragon wobbled, but he, too, lived. They’d made it to another day.
“That movie site you like so much came back online this morning.” Ladon kissed the top of Rysa’s head. “We downloaded about thirty hours of programming, my Lovely Sexy Toes.”
Her husband wanted to cuddle and watch movies and, it seemed, be normal.
“How about you?” Rysa asked Dragon. “You okay with resting?”
He swung his big head and looked up at the sky. For as long as the war allows us, Rysa, he signed.
They were no good to anyone if they weren’t fully healed. She rubbed his shoulder. “Others fight the battles now, my love.”
Ladon swung his robo-leg and leaned on his cane. He, too, looked up. “Aye, they do, love. They do….”
Chapter Sixty-Three
Elsewhere…
“Hey! Mr. Cop!”
The floor of the unit he’d ushered those two damn dumbfuck kids into pressed against Mike Seaver’s chest harder than it should, like he had a boulder on his lungs. The air he managed to pull in smelled wrong. Humid and cold at the same time, like icy fog.
He tried to lift his head. Pain ground through his neck muscles the way it had when he’d wrenched his deltoid last year.
“Officer Seaver!” One of the dumbfuck kids pushed on his shoulder.
Mike opened his eyes to the harsh, red glare streaming through the unit’s window. Moving his arm to shield his eyes felt like pushing against water.
“I think the gravity here is about twenty percent stronger than Earth’s,” the dumbfuck kid with the equally dumbfuck manbun said.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He saved those two little fucks and they repaid him by getting Jason killed. “You need to shut up, kid. Got it? Shut up and let me do my job.” Which he’d do once his head stopped swimming.
He rolled over in an attempt to sit up, which also felt like swimming.
He’d drown in this place if he wasn’t careful.
“Mr. Sisto is still unconscious,” the kid said. “Gavin went out because we really don’t have a choice, do we?” He pointed at the open door. “The window’s got a hole in it so we’re going to be breathing their atmosphere no matter what.”
Their atmosphere? Motherfucker, he thought. “We’re captured?” He pulled himself upright.
Andreas Sisto lay sprawled between the unit’s two seats with his head next to the kid’s foot. The kid leaned against the wall. He’d taken off his leg.
Mike grabbed Sisto’s wrist. His pulse beat strong and steady, if a little fast.
He nodded to the kid. “Prosthetic?”
“Gavin wears hearing aids but whatever brought us here knocked out all the power supplies.” The kid extended his hand. “I’m Ian, by the way. Ian Bower. I’m sorry about the other man. His name was Jason, right? I’m sorry.”
Sisto moaned.
“You two should have kept your asses in the car like I told you to.” Mike pulled himself toward Sisto and the kid.
“My brother’s enthralled, okay?” Ian didn’t look much better than Sisto. “That woman named Dunn enthralled him and now he’s hellbent on getting back to Daisy because he needs to stay with his here.” The kid sighed. “She’s pregnant.” He leaned back. “My brother got accepted to Washington University for med school but he knocked up his half-Russian girlfriend instead and now he’s out there looking for water and a way home because he’s compelled.”
Ian pointed at the open door. “I told him not to open the door.”
Mike checked Sisto’s eyes. “Don’t be an asshole, kid,” he said. The last thing they needed was a one-legged kid with an attitude.
Sisto groaned again.
“I think he has a concussion,” Mike said. “Don’t move him.”
Ian grunted. “And how the hell am I going to move him? He’s got, what, a hundred pounds on me? Make that a hundred twenty, considering.” He waved his hand at the door again.
Slowly, Mike pulled himself to standing. The gravity did feel stronger. The frigid, humid air wasn’t helping.
The box had landed in—appeared in, moved to, he had no fucking idea—a stand of birch-like trees with thin, twisted trunks and huge, purplish leaves.
They didn’t look like any tree he’d ever seen before and the other dumbfuck kid had gone out there alone.
He checked his sidearm. “Stay here. Keep an eye
on Sisto. I’ll get your brother.”
Ian held out his hand. Two titanium hearing aids sat on his palm. “He’ll know if you yell at him if you’re close by, but he won’t understand what you’re saying unless he can read your lips.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Don’t shoot him.”
Mike dropped his hand off his weapon. “I’m not going to shoot your brother, Mr. Bower.”
Ian Bower grunted. “Sure thing, Mr. Cop.”
Mike rubbed his face. Fucking kids.
He plodded out onto the grayish-green, wiggling, grass-like plants just outside the unit. Twenty percent more sounded about right; he felt like he carried an extra forty to fifty pounds.
Which either meant they weren’t on Earth, or that the invaders had gravity generators.
Neither option was good. Mike drew his weapon.
The trees rustled. A twig snapped. Seaver whipped around.
A small hellhound—smaller than the two German shepherds the two kids had in their car but bigger than a cocker spaniel—bounced out from behind a rock.
“Whoa!” he said, and held up his hand.
The hellhound dropped its front end low. It stuck its butt in the air and wagged its stubby little hellhound tail. Its tongue lolled. Then it bounced off behind a dense stand of trees.
Mike lowered his gun. That hellhound seemed a lot more domesticated than—
The little dragon’s head appeared first. It snaked out from around the rock, then pulled back. A bright flash of blue-green followed.
The head reappeared.
The little dragon wasn’t much bigger than the hound and probably would have stood shoulder to shoulder with Ms. Pavlovich’s dogs.
It scurried out from behind the rock and quickly ran up to Mike. It stopped, looked up, then smacked Mike’s knee before running back behind the rock.
The hound jumped out again and “barked” a bright flash of reddish-orange light.
Mike just got smacked by a young dragon and his pet dog.
He holstered his weapon. “You’re a child.”
The Burning World Page 42